Cypress, TX
2.??.2022
In August of 2014 at the University of North Carolina, Crystal began her graduate studies in Biostatistics and met Daniel, who had entered the same program the year before she did. They took little to no notice of one another despite being in the same research group and having neighboring desks. One year later, being the former high school choir nerd that she is, Crystal enrolled in voice lessons and was in need of an accompanist. Lucky for her, labmate Daniel was quite the talented pianist. It wasn’t long before Crystal and Daniel were regularly headed out to practice rooms for jam sessions with music genres ranging from opera and musical theatre to pop.
An entire year later, Crystal and Daniel discovered another shared passion: street tacos. By now, Crystal realized she had a pretty big crush on Daniel. One evening, Daniel and Crystal found themselves headed out for some spontaneous late night tacos. Now on the one hand, this was excellent news for Crystal. Was Daniel interested? Maybe! On the other hand, Crystal had just eaten a massive burrito for dinner and had little to no interest in eating for at least another 4.5 days. But she couldn’t back out now! After (begrudgingly) eating just one taco, they spent four hours in the university quad playing duets on Daniel’s guitar. When they finally went home, Crystal was on cloud 9, and Daniel thought to himself “Wow, I guess that wasn’t so bad.” Soon after, “not so bad” turned into something more, and their relationship officially launched on 09/20/2016 with music, tacos, and swing dancing.
Daniel and Crystal’s ensuing relationship achieved 1 ER visit, 2 perforated eardrums, 3 more years of grad school misery/accomplishments, and countless late nights of playing music in the park. After they completed their doctorate degrees, Daniel and Crystal made a big move up north to Boston, MA for their first big kid jobs. When their 3rd anniversary came around, they made plans to visit Cape Cod (or “the Cod,” as Crystal accidentally calls it).
They headed out to the beach just before sunset with guitar in hand. After a few duets, Daniel serenaded Crystal with an original song. As if that wasn’t romantic enough, he then pulled out their “Adventure Book,” a scrapbook of their relationship. He had added several pages for a number of events that had occurred since the scrapbook’s last update. The last page had only a caption with no photo: “9/21/2019: The day you said ‘yes!’”
Casey
Michael
Anna
Nuvan
Jonathan
Jonathan
Joshua
Barbara
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Graham
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Friday, February ?, 2022
Northwest Houston Vietnamese Alliance Church
5133 Addicks Satsuma Rd, Cypress, TX 77084
Ceremony (Time TBA)
Dinner to Follow
Saturday, February ?, 2022
We are looking for a new venue! Date and Location are TBD, but we are looking for a Saturday in Feburary 2022 in the Cypress, TX area.
Ceremony (Time TBA)
Dinner and Drinks to Follow
Element Houston Vintage Park
We believe we are still booking with Element Houston Vintage Park, but the wedding block deal is TBD until we figure out the when and where we are getting married.
George Bush Intercontinental Airport
35 minutes to Cypress
Recommended for most airlines
William P. Hobby Airport
45 minutes to Cypress
Recommended for Southwest airlines
More information coming soon!
We are registered at Amazon.com and Crate & Barrel.
We ask that there be no boxed gifts brought to the wedding. It sure would be difficult to bring gifts home with us to Boston! Both registries will allow you to ship directly to us. A box will be available at the reception for any cards.
We have currently turned off our RSVP portal, as we are now postponing our wedding with a new date/location TBD. Please check back later. If you have already RSVP’d for our original date, you will be able to re-fill the RSVP again later or we will follow up with you to double check.
Postponement Alert:
As of 10/6/2020, we have made the unfortunate and difficult decision to postpone our wedding. With no vaccine available, cases on the rise again, and flu season here, we cannot see a feasible way to keep ourselves, our loved ones (that’s you!), and our vendors safe. Moving forward with our original date would have required a lot of cross-state travel, as Crystal’s parents are the only two people out of all the immediate family and bridal party who are local to Cypress, TX!
We apologize for any inconvenience this postponement may bring you. No one is more sorry than we are that we won’t get to host our wedding on our originally intended date! That said, between this postponement and all the social distancing, we are all the more excited to celebrate with you when the time comes.
We promise we are working as quickly as we can to book a new date at a new venue and get change-the-dates out to everyone. All we can say for now is that we are looking for a Saturday in February of 2022. Below are answers to some common follow up questions to our postponement.
i. What’s so special about February?
1. Can you tell me more about the Vietnamese tea ceremony?
The tea ceremony is the traditional wedding ritual performed in Vietnamese culture. The bride and groom pour tea for their parents and grandparents while receiving blessings or marital advice in return. Please note that it may be difficult to hear some of the more intimate parts of the ceremony which are performed without a microphone.
The main difference for guests is the procession. The family of the bride gathers inside the sanctuary upon arrival. Barring any inclement weather, family of the groom and any friends are asked to assemble outside and follow the procession inside when the ceremony begins.
We know that attending a Friday event may be difficult for many, but we hope you’ll join us if you are able to make it!
2. What is the recommended attire?
For the wedding on Saturday, we recommend semi-formal: your favorite suit, dress, or pantsuit.
For the tea ceremony on Friday, we recommend “dressy casual” (see here). We also welcome ao dai, a traditional Vietnamese style of clothing, or any traditional attire from your culture.
However, we hope that you will feel free to come as you are, whether that’s in a t-shirt and jeans or your prom dress!
3. Is any part of the celebration outdoors?
4. Where can I find parking?
5. Will transportation be provided?
6. How should I submit my RSVP?
7. Who is Bishop?
8. Will Bishop be at the wedding?
9. Why is your website a little clunky?
It’s been a minute since I last posted! That’s mostly because things have slowed down, as you may have noticed, due to this little COVID-19 bug that’s been going around. I hope you’re all staying safe and sound. Daniel and I have had a few conversations on what we think the plan is come time for our wedding, but the truth is we just can’t make any decisions until closer to then. Things are changing so fast that it’s hard for us to predict what the world is going to look like in even just a few months. Even if Texas relaxes restrictions on gathering sizes, it still might not be safe enough to have all our loved ones put themselves at risk for travel. We will definitely keep you all updated as we make our decisions, though!
On a lighter note, we sent out our save the dates this afternoon! I really enjoyed this project, especially since we got to really make it our own, and it saved us a pretty penny, too! There are actually two parts to this one: designing the save the dates and making the envelopes. That’s right, we made the envelopes. Seems silly, I know, but I wasn’t really into spending $30 on envelopes after we’d saved at least that much by printing our own save the dates.
So first, designing these things. It’s actually not that hard! Some free software, a good quality photo, and a glass of wine (optional) are all you need. I used Inkscape, a free and open source vector graphics editor. It will do similar things to Adobe Photoshop or InDesign, and, for the budget-bride, it’s just the right price. The user interface for this software is…not ideal, but again it is free.
First, you’ll want to go to File > Document Properties and set the size of your save the date. We were going to print using the postcard size at Staples, so I went ahead and used those dimensions. Next, import your image (File > Import), and crop it to your desired size by clipping it. We used the original file from our engagement photographer to keep the super high resolution.
Easily add words using the text box feature. Luckily, unlike the Cricut Design Space software, you do not have to manually place letters. Similar to Microsoft Word, you can set the character and line spacing to your preferences.